When The Stars Speak

It had been a bummer of a day. Jake had not only flunked his astronomy exam, he had also lost his girl friend when he claimed to be smarter than her. In Jake’s mind none of this was his fault and, feeling sorry for himself, he purchased a six pack of beer and found a secluded park bench near the campus rose garden. As he opened his third beer he noticed a single bright star in the darkening sky and impulsively started to recite a poem he had learned as a child. “Star light star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might……………..” Before he could finish, Jake was rudely interrupted by a deep commanding voice. “You don’t really think stars grant wishes…Do You?” Jake looked around. There was no one there. “Up here”, the voice said. “You started the conversation now finish it!” Jake looked back at the star and remained silent. “Yeah, smart ass, its me, I can tell your enjoying a few of my photons, so what the hell do you want?” Jake muttered a few unintelligible words, his gaze transfixed on the brightening star. “Speak up man. I can’t hear you!” Jake had always thought of stars as friendly twinkling lights, but this star was an angry SOB. “I was just wishing,” Jake replied. “It didn’t mean anything.” “You’ve got that right.” The star replied. “You think of yourself as something important and me as a tiny bright spot in the sky, but you have it backwards. You are the tiny spot and I am an enormous nuclear furnace. I was already shining long before your solar system formed and am blasting radiation in all directions, up, down, to the sides and behind me. The tiny bit of light you see is an infinitesimally small part of all my radiation and there are millions of life forms on your tiny planet and on millions of other planets looking at me from all directions and only you and your species assume, that since you can see me, you own me. You depend on a star you call Sun, which in my opinion is a really dumb name, for the energy that allows you to live, and are made of stuff created in the belly of stars long dead. There are only a few billion of you humans. There are millions of billions of stars, more stars than all the grains of sand on your planet, and yet you claim the right to pick out one of us and get wishes granted. You really need to get a grip on reality!” Jake sat very still. The sun was just beginning to peak over the campus buildings behind him. The six pack was empty and the stars were gone. Jake’s inflated ego had been flattened. He went to his astronomy professor and begged to take the test again. His professor smiled and shook his head No. Jake then found his girl friend and asked for forgiveness, she told him to get lost. Later that night Jake crossed the campus after his last class keeping one eye closed. He glanced quickly at the wishing star but kept his mouth shut and quickly looked away. ................................................... Before we were blinded by city lights and before we viewed the stars again through telescopes, man marveled at the star filled sky and imagined Gods revealing themselves, outlined by dots of light. Before the stars began to speak to us through science they were benevolent lights in the heaven put there to guide and aid mankind. Now that we understand their language they are revealing themselves as massive balls of fire, exploding with forces that echo throughout the universe, collapsing into black holes, revealing their ages, showing off their planets, and asking us to put our self agrandizing egoes aside, and yet, we like Jake, close our minds and ignore our new perspectives and the mandates imposed by being a part of the marvelous spectacle that surrounds us. We are born of the dust of exploding stars and gathered by gravity and chemistry to become the vessel of nature that allowes her a mirror in which to view herself. We are indeed priviledged, but we are not free to ignore what the stars are telling us. They have waited a very long time for us to listen.

Are Black Holes Hollow?

     We have long observed that  matter attracts matter. Setting aside electrostatic attractions and magnetism, there remains an attractive force that causes an apple to fall toward the center of our planet and holds our planet in a nearly circular path as it orbits the Sun at 66,000 miles per hour. We have described this mysterious force in great detail but haven't explained it. To measure this force, and to create a unit we can use to compare the attractive force generated by various concentrations of matter, we created a mental construct we call mass. We establish the value of our construct by observing relative motions created by the attractive forces of various massive objects. A small object is accelerated toward the earth at 32 feet per second per second, and orbital velocities and distances are used to estimate the stable acceleration of large orbiting objects like planets and moons. Until recently this relationship between a concentration of matter seemed absolute. Without matter there could be no gravity and matter could not exist without producing gravity. This absolute relationship is explained by assuming that mass warps the space surrounding it and further it warps time. As if this isn't confusing enough, we have extended our concept of mass to any accelerating force resulting in mass becoming, not a weight, but a potential energy dependent upon position and motion.
    We could rename mass,              "the potential energy of separation" or,
    when mass is in contact without relative motion,
                                                        "the pressure energy of contact"
These alternate descriptions are in concert with measurements and descriptions currently associated with our construct, "mass", and are only an alternate view of the same mysterious force tending to draw everything in the universe back together into one big, or very small, clump.
    Recently we used our advanced capability to calculate orbits and mass, to measure the revolutions of whole galaxies and found, that either our math or our understanding of matter and mass was wrong. Unwilling to give up current long proven scientific assumptions we concluded that there must be an enormous amount of invisible mass creating enough gravity to explain the observed anomalies and, "dark matter" was added to our conceptual repertoire. An easier explanation would have been welcomed but using new telescopes to observe the bending of light from distant objects, the presence of dark matter seems confirmed. But have we really described gravitational effects accurately?
    Newton was the first to describe gravity in mathematical terms by inventing the calculus, and in between a detailed examination of the Bible in an attempt to calculate the exact date the world would end, he also developed formulae to describe gravitational effects under special conditions. One of these conditions was gravity in and on a massive hollow sphere. On the surface of the sphere gravity attracts toward the sphere's center, but inside the sphere, on its inner surface or anywhere else inside, there is zero gravity. The formula is simple and can be found on the Internet.
    Another curious effect arises from gravity's pressure energy of contact. On the surface of a massive solid sphere gravity attracts all things toward the sphere's center, but inside, if mass is distributed equally, matter near the surface is attracted by all of the matter below extending to the other side of the sphere, but as one measures pressure deeper in the sphere, the matter above begins to have an upward attraction and there being less matter extending to the other side the attraction toward the center is decreased. The mass above and below continue to increase and decrease until we reach the center of the sphere where they are equal and at zero gravity the pressure energy created by zero gravity also becomes zero. From this perspective the highest pressure energy occurs, not at the center of the solid sphere, but at about 2/3 of the way from the surface to the center. This disparity from the assumption that gravity increases from the surface of a massive spherical, or disk shaped object, at a constant rate from the surface, or rim, to the center raises questions about conditions at the center of  planets, stars, black holes and the rotational integrity of galaxies.  Galaxies may be more stable than thought, and black holes, surrounded by massively compressed shells, may be hollow and the paradox of black hole evaporation from the event horizon may be answered if the black hole also has an inner event horizon and acts as a secure vault for
antimatter as matter evaporates outward and antimatter evaporates inward. In the matter of black holes, quantum theory and relativity may be reconciled if black holes have hair on both sides of their event horizons.